Success in the city grows at the South Side Innovation Center

David Lassman / The Post-StandardEntrepreneurs at the South Side Innovation Center (left to right) El-Java Abdul-Qadir, Shawan East, and Christiana Kaiser.

By Bob Herz, Contributing writer

Let’s talk success.

One day, a man rented one of our 10-foot-by-10-foot offices at the South Side Innovation Center and enrolled in our entrepreneurial training courses. He had recently left a large local company to strike out on his own, doing environmental testing.

Flash forward. Through the following year his business expands, he moves to a bigger office, hires five people, moves to an even bigger office, wins the SSIC business plan competition, buys a company and then a second, and opens another office in Binghamton. His name is Shawan East. His company is East Environmental Group, LLC.

Another success story: Christiana Kaiser, whose Blue Tree Studios offers Authentic Bolga Baskets, art from Ghana, and a West African-style peanut brittle called “Better Brittle.” How’s she doing? Fifty stores, so far, stock her brittle. She’s opened a second office.

Ideas and innovation

Central New York was long known as a place for ideas, innovation and entrepreneurship. Those attributes spawned risk-takers who started their own businesses, grew them and created jobs and wealth. A number of organizations in the Syracuse region are teaching this talent and nurturing risk-takers. Over the next few months, The Post-Standard plans to invite people who are encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship in Central New York to share their ideas.

Did we expect this? Actually, we did. We expect this or something like it from all our clients and tenants at the South Side Innovation Center. The SSIC is a training center and business incubator at South Salina Street and Brighton Avenue, just across the parking lot from the Dunk & Bright furniture store. We’re the place where entrepreneurs go to make their dreams into something real.

We’re the place where people find opportunities and take them, even in these challenging times.

The people who take these opportunities are recreating our economy.

We see big companies laying off, but small companies are expanding, adding jobs, creating wealth. Many people in this community are affected by the layoffs. The unemployment rate is down from last year’s 9 percent high to the mid-to-high 7 percent. If you include people who’ve stopped looking for work and people working part time because they can’t find full-time work, the unemployment rate is 14.8 percent, almost 50,000 people.

That’s where SSIC can help: If you can’t find a job, don’t have a job, don’t have the right job, then we can help you do what others have done — create your own company, make your market, hire yourself. Seize the opportunity.

On Tuesday, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at SSIC, we’re celebrating all this accomplishment with an expo where Shawan East, Christiana Kaiser and 50 other SSIC tenants and clients will show off their goods and services. You can buy their goods, or win a raffle basket of them, and watch demonstrations. We expect a couple hundred attendees.

Best of all, you can meet our counselors, who will be available to anyone who wants to be part of the new wave of entrepreneurship in Syracuse. Find out what we do, how we do it, and what’s in it for you.

The entrepreneurs mentioned at the start of this article and hundreds like them are recreating the Syracuse economy from the bottom up. There’s not a company at SSIC that doesn’t expect to be a $5 million or $10 million company in a few years.

If you want to see the future, and want to be part of it, then come to SSIC on Tuesday, and talk to us about opportunity.

Are there more success stories to inspire you? You bet. Here are two more among dozens who succeeded through SSIC and are driving the CNY economy:

El-Java Abdul-Qadir, world champion martial artist, ranked No. 1 in the United States in his division for four years.

He turned his passion for martial arts into the Excel Martial Arts Training Center on Nottingham Road, where he is instructor and owner. He, too, is an SSIC graduate. He’s also a skilled counselor, working at SSIC with people who are low income or disabled, helping others do what he did. He’s compiled an incredible record—his clients have created 76 businesses so far, with 53 currently in operation.

Stacey VanWaldick, founder of Promise Me Chocolate, a line of edible chocolate gems, rings, and bon-bons with gemstone facets and colors.

She worked with SSIC’s Community Test Kitchen, learning to temper various kinds of chocolate. Then she made it into Oprah’s “O List” for the 2009 Holiday season and into Martha Stewart Weddings, “Wedding Ideas That Sparkle.” Sales soared. “Don’t promise me forever, but promise me chocolate,” she says.

It’s a great tag line, and it illustrates the promise of innovation and entrepreneurship.

How the SSIC has grown
The South Side Innovation Center is the product of Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s vision of Scholarship in Action and Community Engagement. Her idea was that faculty, students, and the community could enrich each other.

Making university resources available in the community creates opportunities that could not otherwise exist. Engaged faculty and students benefit from broadening subject areas, and deepening experience and knowledge.

SSIC has expanded several times since then, and now has 27 tenants, about 300 clients, and about 1,000 people engaged in learning how to succeed. The center provides 180 hours of intensive classroom training, mentoring, access to the best and brightest business talent in the community and university, access to credit, help in creating a business entity, and help in opening markets.

To enroll: Contact SSIC at 315-443-8600, or walk in at 2610 S. Salina St., across the parking lot from Dunk & Bright. SSIC provides programs for all and some programs targeted to needs of particular groups — including women, persons with low income or disabilities, minorities and others. Counselors will enroll you quickly in the right program.

Bob Herz’s 5 traits that entrepreneurs need

Bob Herz

Pay attention. As someone said, every day you walk past a million dollars, but most don’t see it.

No censoring. It’s not your job to say no to your idea. (Others will do that.)

Dream for value. It takes as much energy to dream big as to dream small.

Be honest. Be honest about your strengths and weaknesses. You can become stronger, and overcome your weaknesses, but there is no protection against lies you tell yourself.